CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE GREAT BALANCING ACT

COURTING DANGER ON THE HIGH WIRE

Imagine a high-wire artist at the circus. There she is, arms extended, stepping ever so carefully along the thin wire. Step. Wobble …(Gasps from the crowd!) Steadies herself. (Audible relief.) Step. Ooops. Step … No doubt she could move smoothly and quickly across, but she is making (or barely making) her aerial journey for our pleasure and excitement.

She plays with our emotions, knowing we will remember her trip long after the lights and noise fade to nothing.

Writing lyrics is a high-wire act: The way you keep or lose your balance makes all the difference to your audience. Sometimes a little aerial drama may be just what you need to get and keep your listeners' undivided attention.

Here's a very simple balancing (or unbalancing) technique: Control the number of phrases in your sections, and you can learn to keep or lose your balance in just the right places.

In general, assuming that phrase lengths are more or less equal, and the rhyme scheme moves more or less evenly, an even number of phrases creates a balanced section; an odd number, an unbalanced section.

The simplest case is repetition. An even number of phrases creates a stable section:

While an odd number creates an unstable section:

Not a hard concept, but a very useful one. You can get the same effect without repetition, like this three-phrase section:

Common meter pairs off its longer second and fourth phrases and its shorter first and third:

In this example, the two short phrases of the third line add up to equal the first phrase, giving us another balanced piece of common meter:

But if we trim it to three phrases, it unbalances:

How do we use balancing and unbalancing? Stated simply, unbalanced sections make you want to move to find a stable spot. Balanced sections stop motion; they pause for a rest. Balancing and unbalancing a lyric in the right places gives you at least four audience-grabbing strategies:(1) spotlighting important ideas; (2) pushing one section forward into another section; (3) contrasting one section with another one; and (4) setting up a need for a balancing section or phrase.

Watch the high-wire work of Janis Ian and Kye Fleming in this lovely lyric, “Some People's Lives”:

1. SPOTLIGHTING IMPORTANT DETAILS

This is the easiest and most practical use of balancing. When a section has an even number of phrases, the sections stops for a rest along the high wire. The pause allows the spotlight to shine on the last phrase. The first verse of “Some People's Lives” uses the position well:

That's all they've got is the climax of the section. The balancing position allows us to savor it by letting it rest in the spotlight a few seconds. Note, however, that the rhyme scheme, abbb, is a little unstable. Though the line lengths and rhythms match, we have the same effect at the end of line three that we saw earlier in the second verse of “Fathers and Sons” — the abb rhyme pattern raises no expectations:

Adding the fourth line provides a balancing position, but we still have an odd number of rhymes:

Compare how it feels to this:

Now it feels really stable. The stability actually adds an emotion (motion creates emotion).

Whereas the real version's rhyme scheme, because it's unstable, adds a different emotion:

Isn't it sad? It makes me feel like something's missing. It's especially noticeable when you look at the first three sections together:

Both verses have the unstable rhyme scheme abbb. The chorus is very stable. So we have two unstable sections (sad lives), moving into a stable section — “our love makes me stable. I wish everyone had this kind of love in their lives.” If the rhyme scheme in the verses were stable, the arrival at a stable section in the chorus wouldn't have the same power:

Now we feel stable for the whole trip. The chorus, and therefore the singer's gratitude for the love she receives, is diminished by the stable rhyme scheme. The chorus is less of a landing place than it is in the original version.

2. PUSHING ONE SECTION FORWARD INTO ANOTHER SECTION

Rhyme scheme can create instability, but you can get even more dramatic results with an odd number of lines. It can work wonders when you want the audience to hold their breath. Ian and Fleming teeter on the wire in verse four, then pause (gasp), then they step forward into a balanced chorus:

The chorus settles us down, but some tension still remains. Three phrases plus four phrases still leaves us a little uneasy. The last phrase of the chorus is a question; the problem of loneliness still looms for some people.

3. CONTRASTING ONE SECTION WITH ANOTHER ONE

The number of lines in the first three verses of “Some People's Lives” are even and balanced:

The contrast with these balanced sections gives verse four its power.

We expect stability. Instead, it totters on the brink for a moment:

The crowd tenses up and begins to sweat. Will she fall?

Another way to unbalance a section is to add a phrase. Look again at “The Great Pretender.” Verses one and two are balanced, so we expect verse three to be balanced as well:

The extra phrase in verse three is a surprise. Line four, the balancing position, is still a spotlighted power position, but the extra phrase stumbles forward on the wire to turn additional spotlights onto the most important phrase in the song.

Ian and Fleming pull the Great Pretender trick at the end of “Some People's Lives.” The balanced first and second choruses set up the surprise of the third chorus:

The crucial idea gets bathed in spotlights.

4. CREATING A NEED FOR A BALANCING SECTION OR PHRASE

The real beauty of “Some People's Lives” is that the two short sections, verses four and five, each prepare us for a headlong pitch to the saw-dust. Chorus two left us queasy, since we were still struggling to balance an odd number of phrases (seven):

The bridge balances again with an even number of phrases:

But again, verse five loses its balance (the crowd holds their breath …):

The last chorus tries to get home, but seems to end short of the platform:

The crowd remains restless. Things still wobble on the high wire. The bridge / verse / chorus last system certainly did need something more, a need set up by the unbalanced three-phrase verses. Something more finally arrives, in spades: 'cause that's all they need.

Spotlights blaze onto the extra phrase as it balances the entire last system with an even number of phrases (twelve), and steps onto the platform at the other side of the high-wire journey. We breathe a sigh of satisfaction and relief, not only because we have arrived, but because the trip has been fraught with danger and the result has been so satisfying. The last phrase stands firm and strong in the carefully prepared balancing position and delivers its message forcefully: Love is all you need. The crowd goes wild.

You can try this stuff yourself. First try some simple balancing and unbalancing of a single section. Take something like:

Add a phrase:

Take one away:

Or maybe:

EXERCISE 46